Two polls show Europe's old order is simply falling apart

Marine Le Pen, France's
National Front political party leader, reacts after being
re-elected during their congress in Lyon November 30,
2014.REUTERS/Robert
Pratta

Local and regional elections in France and Spain over the weekend
showed radical parties on both the left and the right are now a
major threat to mainstream political parties.

In France, exit polls in local elections
put Marine Le Pen's Front National in third
place with between 23-26% of the vote. Although
it failed to hit its target of becoming the first
party of French politics by overtaking the governingParti
Socialiste and the
centre-right UMP, it was nevertheless its best performance in
local elections in history and confirmed its place as the third
party in what French newspaper
Le Monde is now calling a political "triangle".

Elsewhere, elections in the
Spanish region of Andalusia elicited equally strong results for
the erstwhile political outsiders in the form of anti-austerity
party Podemos. A long-time Socialist party stronghold, Podemos
had been downplaying its chances ahead of the vote. However,
in the event it took 15 seats — some way short of the 47
seats taken by the Socialists but still a credible performance
that will be a warning against complacency by its rivals.

Prime minister Mariano
Rajoy's People’s party came in second with 27% of the vote,
winning 33 seats. That, however, marked a loss of 17 seats the
party had previously held. Also of note, the centre right
anti-austerity party Ciudadanos, which has seen its support
surging of late (see the orange line on the chart below), took
nine seats.

The similarities between the
two polls should not be overplayed. After all, Podemos is a new
player in Spanish politics having only been founded last year
by Pablo Iglesias, a political science professor at
the Complutense University of Madrid, coming out of protest
movement against inequality and corruption in the country.

Support for the party surged
soon after its foundation as frustrated Spanish voters finally
found a political outlet to voice their opposition to policies
that have left the unemployment rate over 23% more than six years
since the financial crisis began. However, the party's youth
means that its support has yet to be properly tested against a
traditionally strong two-party system in the country with a
general election scheduled for December.

By contrast, support for the
Front National in France has been building since the 1970s.
Although it saw peaks and troughs of popularity over the decades
under Jean-Marie Le Pen, since his daughter took charge of the
party in 2011 it has attempted to shed its racist image and court
disaffected voters who feel marginalised by mainstream
politics.

Unlike Podemos, FN now has
something of a track record of electoral success having taken its
largest share of the vote ever in the 2012 presidential election
and the 2014 European parliament elections.

While the two are therefore at
quite different stages of development and political maturity, it
is of interest that support for non-traditional parties has been
increasing across Europe just as officials continue their
attempts to get the engine of the region's growth restarted. The
particular complaints may differ from country to country, but one
clear message is that there are increasing numbers of people who
have become disillusioned with the way that traditional parties
are representing them.

That said, third place for both
FN and Podemos is not the earthquake that either would ideally
have wanted. But it should be a warning against complacency that
things will simply revert to form in Europe following the
crisis.

After the victory of the
radical left Syriza party in Greece, the rise of anti-austerity
Podemos and Ciudadanos in Spain, Italy's Five Star Movement
and the resurgent Front National it seems that "triangular"
politics is something that Europe is going to be seeing a lot
more of. But they will need to turn their poll gains into
electoral results if they are to shift the political discussion
and force a change of tack among Europe's elites.

The struggles of Syriza in
negotiating a new deal for Greece with international partners
does not offer much hope in this regard. At least not yet.

As the French
journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once wrote: "plus ça
change, plus c'est la même chose" ("the more it changes, the more
it's the same thing"). The survival of Europe's
anti-establishment parties relies on him being wrong.